Curriculum
Vitae
Rebecca
Elizabeth Zorach
Department of
Art History
Cochrane-Woods Art Center
5540 S. Greenwood Ave.
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773 702-6590
Fax: 773 702-0291
Email: rezorach@uchicago.edu
Present
Appointment
Associate Professor
(tenured) of Art History and the College, University of Chicago.
Education
University of
Chicago. PhD in Art History
with departmental honors, August 1999. Major field: Theory and Criticism. Minor
field: Early modern (1400-1800).
Dissertation topic: The Figuring of Excess in French Renaissance Art.
Committee: Professors Michael Camille, Linda Seidel, Lauren Berlant
University of Chicago. MA in Art History,
December 1994.
Universit de Genve,
Switzerland. Coursework and research in medieval and Renaissance art and
literature.
Harvard
University. AB summa cum laude,
June 1991. Concentration: History and Literature. Honors essay title: The Open
End and the Multi-faceted Mirror:
Incompleteness and Interpretation in the Roman de la Rose.
Council of Graduate Schools, Gustave O.
Arlt Award in the Humanities, awarded December 2006 for Blood, Milk, Ink,
Gold (see below).
Society for the Study of Early Modern
Women, 2005 Book Award for best book relating to the study of early modern
women and gender (tied for first place).
University
of Chicago Faculty Fellowship, Franke Institute for the Humanities, 2006-7.
ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowship, alternate, 2006-7.
Eleanor M. Garvey Fellowship in Printing and Graphic Arts,
Houghton Library, Harvard University, 2006-7 (short-term).
Center for British Art Visiting Fellowship, Yale University,
2006-7.
Provosts Program for Academic Technology Innovation (University
of Chicago). Principal investigator for grant of $27,658 awarded for A Digital
Collection of the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, in collaboration with the
University Library, 2005-7. Grant to cover costs of preparation and scanning,
database and interface development, and metadata entry and enrichment. Grant
from Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, $13,000 for web
design and exhibition catalogue. Grant from Samuel H. Kress Foundation, $6000
for associated conference.
University
of Chicago Arts Planning Council, small grants for Pathogeographies Visiting
Artist Series (2007); Art, Community, Activism class (2004-5) and
Counter/Depression exhibition (2003-4)
Fulbright
Lecturing/Researching Award, Thailand, June-September 2003.
Newberry
Library Weiss-Brown Publication Subvention Grant, for Blood, Milk, Ink,
Gold, Spring 2003.
Mellon Postdoctoral
Fellow, Penn Humanities Forum, University of Pennsylvania, 2000-2001.
Mary
Davis Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, 1997-1999.
Fulbright
Fellow, France, October 1997-March 1998.
Travel grant, Visiting
Committee of the Department of Art History, University of Chicago, summer 1996.
Chagall
Fellowship for research in France, summer 1995.
Andrew
W. Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities, 1992-1997.
Swiss Universities Grant for research in French
literature and art history, 1991-2.
Oliver-Dabney
Prize for honors essay in History and Literature, 1991.
Phi
Beta Kappa, spring 1990.
Academic
Appointments
2003-present University of Chicago
Associate Professor,
Art History and the College, 2007-
Assistant Professor,
Art History and the College, 2003-2007
Affiliated faculty, Department of Romance
Languages and Literatures, Center for Gender Studies, and Department of Visual
Arts; Resource Faculty, Cinema and Media Studies.
Harper-Schmidt Fellow and Collegiate
Assistant Professor, 2001-2003
Fall,
2002 Visiting
Lecturer, Department of History of Art, Yale University
2000-2001 Mellon
Postdoctoral Fellow, Penn Humanities Forum, University of Pennsylvania. Taught
two undergraduate seminars (one per semester)
1999-2000 Preceptor,
Master of Arts Program in the Humanities, and Lecturer in Art History,
University of Chicago
Courses Taught
Baroque
Europe (survey); Body, Space, Desire: Feminist Theories of Visuality;
Renaissance Neoplatonism and the Visual Arts; Utopias; Art, Community,
Activism; Prints and Print Culture in Early Modern Europe; Anachronism;
Feminism and the Visual Arts; Renaissance Art Theory; Renaissance Art of the
Book; Fontainebleau and the Performance of Meaning; The Devotional Body in
Northern Renaissance Art; Media Theory; Media Aesthetics (Humanities Core
course, University of Chicago); The Body in Renaissance Art; Body, Style and
Space in Early Modern Europe; Styles of Desire: Medieval and Renaissance Courts
and Courtly Arts; Visual Culture and the Reformation; Embodiment: Theory,
History, Practice; Twentieth-Century European Women Artists.
The Renaissance in
Three Dimensions: Art, Geometry, Subjectivity in the Renaissance, book manuscript in progress, advance
contract granted, University of Chicago Press.
Rome Virtuelle:
Prsence et absence de la Ville ternelle dans les estampes du 16e sicle,
forthcoming in Les arts visuels de la Renaissance en France, ed. Henri Zerner and Marc Bayard,
Acadmie de France Rome. Another version will be published in the proceedings
of the Congress of the International Association of Bibliophiles.
Un autre respect
pour les lettres des Princes: Time, Devotion and Empire in the Almanacs of the
Sun King. In: Agns Guiderdoni-Brusl, Ralph Dekoninck, and Walter Melion,
eds., Ut Pictura Meditatio: The Meditative Image in Northern Art, 1500-1700 (Brill, forthcoming).
Passionate Angles, Italian translation forthcoming in
Allison Levy, Sex Acts: Practice, Performance,
Perversion and Punishment in Early Modern Italy (Casa editrice Le Lettere, forthcoming 2008).
The Idol in the
Age of Art, collected
essays, co-edited with Michael Cole. Includes authored chapter, Idols of the
Mind: Print as material and immaterial in early Renaissance devotion and
co-authored introduction (Ashgate, forthcoming 2008).
The Virtual
Tourist in Renaissance Rome: Printing and Collecting the Speculum Romanae
Magnificentiae. Exhibition
catalogue. Edited with introduction, short essays. Published by the University
of Chicago Library, to be distributed by University of Chicago Press. Produced
in conjunction with The Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae Digital Collection, database and website, University of
Chicago Library: http://speculum.lib.uchicago.edu
Blood, Milk, Ink,
Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance. December 2005, University of Chicago
Press. Awarded Society for the Study of Early Modern Women 2005 Book Award
(co-winner); Gustave O. Arlt Award of the Council of Graduate Schools, 2006.
Paper Museums: The
Reproductive Print in Europe 1500-1800 (catalogue of exhibition, see below; co-editor with
Elizabeth Rodini), February 2005.
Embodied Utopias: Gender, social
change, and the modern metropolis (co-editor
with Amy Bingaman and Lise Sanders). Volume based on conference. Routledge, January 2002.
Introduction (co-authored; pp. 1-12) and Haunting the City (section
introduction, pp. 220-224).
Publications:
Articles and Book Chapters
Renaissance Theory: A
Selective Introduction, in: Renaissance Theory, ed. James Elkins and Robert
Williams (The Art Seminars series, Routledge
and Cork University Press, April 2008).
Love, Truth, Orthodoxy, Reticence: Or,
What Edgar Wind Didnt See in Botticellis Primavera, Critical Inquiry special issue On the Case: Missing
Persons, vol. 34, No. 1
(Autumn 2007), pp. 190-224.
The
French Renaissance: An Unfinished Project, chapter for Artists at Court: Image-Making
and Identity 1300–1550, ed. Stephen Campbell, 2005, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
Blood upon the earth: Sacrifice and
ritual in the Kings Window, chapter in The Seventh Window, 2005, ed. Wim de Groot.
Desiring Things, Art
History, Special Issue
2001, pp. 195-212; also published as Other Objects of Desire: Collectors and
Collecting Queerly, ed.
Michael Camille and Adrian Rifkin, Blackwell, 2002, pp. 33-50.
Everything Swims
with Excess: Gold and its fashioning in early modern France, Res:
Anthropology and Aesthetics, Spring
2000, pp. 125-137.
Tu imagen divina:
The Fetishism of the Femme and her Secret in Almodvars Tacones lejanos, Torre de papel, Spring 2000, pp. 124-133.
The Flower That Falls Before the Fruit:
The Galerie Franois Ier at Fontainebleau and Atys Excastratus, Bibliothque dHumanisme et
Renaissance, spring 2000,
pp. 63-88.
Despoiled At the Source, Art
History 22:2, June 1999, pp. 244-269.
The Matter of Italy: Sodomy and the
Scandal of Style in Sixteenth-Century France, Journal of Medieval and Early
Modern Studies, 28:3,
Fall 1998, pp. 581-609.
Publications:
Encyclopedia Entries, Short Essays and Reviews
'Dangerous to Beauties': The Sabine
Women, Symbolic Conquest, and Classicism," commissioned essay for Smart
Museum Adaptation exhibition, ca. 2000 words, online at:
http://adaptation.uchicago.edu/artists/sussman/responses/ as of March 21, 2008.
"Ten Habits of Highly Effective
Feelings," commissioned catalogue essay, ca. 750 words, in Dee
Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman, Psychological Prosthetics: Helping You Handle
Your Emotional Baggage in Political Times. Exh.cat. July 2007.
Bernard Salomon,
illustrateur lyonnais [by Peter Sharratt] review in Renaissance Quarterly, September 2006.
Judith Butler, entry. In: Art:
Key Contemporary Thinkers, ed. Diarmuid Costello and Jonathan Vickery (Berg, 2006)
YOUgenics 3.0, rhizome.org,
March 1, 2005
Theory of Every Thing, The
Boston Globe Ideas,
January 9, 2005
Marcia, entry, Women in the Middle
Ages: An Encyclopedia, edited
by Nadia Margolis and Katharina Wilson, Greenwood Press, 2004
Unsolved Mysteries of the Renaissance, The
Boston Globe Ideas, July
18, 2004
Version>04: Invisible
Networks, review, rhizome.org, May 2004
Painting by Numbers, The Boston
Globe Ideas, January 4,
2004
Multiple Standards, review of Beauty Suit
at Chiang Mai University Art Museum, art4d, no. 98, October 2003
Insurance Nation, The
Boston Globe Ideas, March 9, 2003
The Book of the Heart [by Eric Jager], Sixteenth Century
Journal.
Adrian Armstrong, Technique and
Technology: Script, Print and Poetics in France, 1470-1550 in The Medieval Review electronic newsletter, 01.08.03.
The Art of Arts [by Anita Albus], Art Bulletin, December 2002
Art in France, entry, Encyclopedia
of the Renaissance (Scribners,
1999)
The End of Visual
Culture? Chicago Art Journal
v. 7, no. 1 (Spring 1997)
The Piet in French
Late Gothic Sculpture [by William Forsyth], review, The Sixteenth Century
Studies Journal, Fall
1996
An Interview with
Lucy Lippard, Chicago Art Journal
v. 6, no. 1 (Spring 1996).
Sex, Laws, and
Virtual Reality (review of Catharine MacKinnons Only Words), Chicago Art Journal v. 4, no. 1 (Spring 1994)
New
Medieval Aesthetic, Wired
2.01 (January, 1994).
Anthologized
in Paul Amore, A Virtual Common Place, http://college.hmco.com/english/amore/demo/ch5.html
Selected
Recent Lectures, Conferences and Workshops
"Passionate Angles" at NYU's
Institute of Fine Arts, invited lecture as part of Silberberg Lecture Series,
April 2008.
"Obscenity, Defacement, and Artistic
Practice in Sixteenth-Century France"; also panel chair, "Virtual
Romes"; panel chair and organizer, "Pictures to Think With."
Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, April 2008.
Keynote address, "'When one head is
cut off, seven more sprout up': Prints and the reproduction of culture."
Reproduction/Seriality, graduate conference at University of Southern
California, March 2008.
What the vast majority of people have
to say is of absolutely no value whatsoever: Art as excess and obstacle,
invited lecture, Humanities Forum, Southern Illinois University Carbondale,
February 2008.
The Triangular Imagination, lecture, Art,
Text, Imagination conference,
Northwestern University, November 2007.
1527: The Sack of Rome, lecture,
Chicago Humanities Festival, November 2007.
The Public Utility of Print, lecture, The
Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome conference,
University of Chicago, November 2007.
Rome Virtuelle: Prsence et absence de
la Ville ternelle dans les estampes du 16e sicle, lecture, Les arts
visuels de la Renaissance en France, Acadmie
de France Rome, June 2007. Also presented to International Congress of
Bibliophiles, October 2007.
Seeing In Triangles, invited lecture, Early
Modern Eyes Conference,
University of Wisconsin at Madison, March 2007.
Making Antiquity Public: Knowledge,
Pleasure and Prints in Early Modern Rome, Prints and the Production of
Knowledge seminar, Harvard Humanities Center, December 2006.
Sex, Angles, and the Melancholy
Peasant, presented at Theorizing Early Modern Studies, University of Minnesota
(Twin Cities), October 2006.
An Idolatry of
the Letter: Early Modern Visual Culture, the Sun King and Siam, invited
lecture, Yale University, September 2006. Version also presented as Un
autre respect pour les lettres des Rois: Time, Devotion and Empire in the
Almanacs of the Sun King at Ut Pictura Meditatio conference, Emory University, October
2006 and at Association for Asian Studies meeting, Boston, March 2006.
A Virtual Rome: The View from Albion,
gallery talk, Center for British Art, Yale University, September 2006.
The Idol East and West, presented at
Limage des Anciens, Limage des Modernes: Permanence des Problmatiques? Universit Catholique de Louvain, May 2006.
What Edgar Wind Didnt See in
Botticellis Primavera,
Duke University, March 2006. Versions also presented at Kunsthistorisches
Institut, Florence, June 2006; and as keynote address of National Undergraduate
Art History Symposium, April 2007.
Pagan Mysteries in Chicago, College Art
Association, Boston, February 2006.
Blood, Ink, Milk, Gold at Alliance
Franaise, Chicago, January 2006.
Jealous Geometries: Venus, Vulcan and
Mars as Renaissance Fantasy, paper presented at Oxford University, December
2005; also at Northwestern University Early Modern Group and University of
Chicago Renaissance Seminar, November 2005
Paper Museums, gallery talk, Grey Art
Gallery, New York, September 14, 2005
Rethinking the Brazilian Village at
Rouen: Novelty or Antiquity? paper presented at Renaissance Society of America
meeting, April 7, 2005
Contemporary art in Thailand, invited
lecture, 2/25/05, for ITP-Thailand, Northwestern Law School.
Erotic Triangles, Print Culture, and
Artistic Identity in the Renaissance: The Case of Vulcan, Venus and Mars,
Gender and Sexuality Studies Workshop, U of C, February 2005
Visual Culture: Why (not)? and
Tactical Media, Media Art and Design Program, Chiang Mai University,
Thailand, December 2004
The Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae: An
Enigmatic Renaissance Print Collection, University of Chicago Humanities Open
House, October 2004.
Series of lectures on medieval and
Renaissance art, religion and politics for Village Life in the Dordogne,
University of Chicago alumni tour to France, June 2004.
Thinking
Diagrams: Medicine and the Mathematical Arts in Early Printed Books,
International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 2004
Pulled
by Night from its Tomb: Animating Dead Antiquity in Renaissance France, Recent
PhD Lecture, The Ohio State University, January 2004. (Versions also presented
at Franke Institute, May 2004 and Renaissance Workshop, December 2004, both
University of Chicago)
All
the Straight Lines Bend: Geometry Confronts the Body Around 1500, Sixteenth
Century Studies Conference, October 2003.
Contemporary
Art in the United States, Silapakorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, September
2003.
Does
Deconstruction Matter Any More? Chiang Mai University Faculty of Fine Arts,
Chiang Mai, Thailand, August 2003.
Sense,
Intellect and Imagination in the Diagrams of Charles de Bovelles, Convivum,
Siena College, October 2002.
The
French Renaissance: An Unfinished Project, The Renaissance Court Artist,
Isabella Stewart Gardner Symposium, March 2002.
Invidia,
Maniera, Mastery, College Art Association, February 2002.
Events programming with Monk Parakeet
collective at Experimental Station (experimentalstation.org), 2006-
Curator, The Virtual Tourist in
Renaissance Rome: Printing and Collecting the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, Special Collections Research Center,
September 2007-February 2008.
Co-organizer
(with Feel Tank), Pathogeographies (or, other peoples baggage). Exhibition and event
series involving more than 70 artists. At the Edge series, Gallery 400,
University of Illinois at Chicago, planned for spring/summer, 2007.
Curator,
Paper Museums: The Reproductive Print in Europe 1500-1800. Mellon exhibition,
Smart Museum, University of Chicago, February-May 2005 (Chicago); fall 2005
(NYU).
Curator,
Counter/Depression, student exhibition at Center for Gender Studies,
February-March 2004.
Curator, Public
Feelings, Umong Sippadamma, Chiang Mai, Thailand, August 16, 2003.
Feeling Good about Feeling Bad. Performance with Feel Tank
Chicago at Pilot TV: Experimental Media for Feminist
Trespass. Chicago, October 2004.
With Feel Tank Chicago. Invisible Feelings, Version>04
convergence, co-presented with Deborah Gould, Chicago, April 2004.
Additional camera and research, Axis of Evil, film directed by Carmine Cervi
(BulletProof Film, 2004).
Service
and Professional Involvement
Department
of Art History: Director of Undergraduate Studies, 2005-6; MA advisor and graduate
affairs committee, 2003-4; graduate admissions committee 2003-4 and 2004-5;
medieval/early modern search committee, 2003-4 and 2004-5; Visual Resources
search committee, 2004-5; Chair, early modern search committee, 2007-8; Chair,
Curriculum review committee, 2007.
University
Committees: France Center Chicago steering committee, 2005- and fellowships committee, 2003-5; Tave
fellowships committee, 2003-4; Committee on the Campus Plan, 2005-8; Civic
Knowledge Project, 2006-; Board of University Publications, 2007-; Council of
the University Senate, 2007-.
University of Chicago Center for Gender
Studies: Steering Committee member, 2001-2 and 2005-6, Junior Faculty Group
Coordinator, 2004-5. Chair, Public Sphere Committee, 2001-2. Member, Director
Search Committee, 2001-2.
Manuscript
Reviewer, University of Chicago Press, Wadsworth Publishing, Art Bulletin,
Renaissance Quarterly, Early Modern France. Application screener, SSRC International Dissertation Field
Research fellowships, 2005-7. Reviewer, SSHRC Research Fellowships, 2006-7.
Advisory
Board Member, AREA: Chicago Art, Education, Activism, published by Stockyard Institute,
Chicago.
Co-organizer,
Negotiated Aesthetics: Art, Work and Identity in the Long Fifteenth Century.
Conference, May 2003. Sponsored
by Department of Art History and the Franke Institute for the Humanities.
Co-organizer, Embodied
Utopias. Developed theme
for lecture series and conference, wrote successful Graham foundation grant
proposal, oversaw $20,000 budget, planned and coordinated events for project on
gender, architecture, and utopia, sponsored by the University of Chicago Center
for Gender Studies, spring 1997-spring 1999.
Member, College Art
Association; Renaissance Society of America; Interdisciplinary Working Group on
the Medieval and Early Modern World
Student
Advising
Advised one completed dissertation as
second reader, one as fourth reader; 2 in progress as first reader; 4 in
progress as second reader; 1 as third reader.
9
completed MA theses as first reader; 2 as second reader
12 completed BA papers
French (fluent, French
baccalaurat, 1987); Italian and German (excellent reading and good speaking
ability); Latin (good reading ability). Some reading knowledge of Spanish,
Dutch, Greek, and Sanskrit.